Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Public Enemies (2009) -vs- Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The Smackdown.  Gangsters have occupied a rather over-elevated rung on the movie subject matter ladder since the first hand-cranked silents unspooled for the hungry hordes a century ago. Criminals lead such dramatic lives, so full of danger and tragedy and excitement that we naturally look to them for our movie myths and anti-heroes.  We fantasize and fetishize these quintessential losers so dutifully that they continue to exude glamour and power some seventy-odd years past their reign of terror. Their Depression seemed more romantic, more photo-ready than our own, their poverty and hard times made picturesque by the passage of time. Criminal desperation and anarchic violence gets rendered literary and archetypal. So which film featuring the fall of which ill-fated bankrobber/lover makes the grade? Depp’s dapper Dillinger faces off squarely with Beatty’s Barrow.

The Challenger. "Public Enemies" (2009) ||  Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp in an ambitious fever dream version of the last gasp of 1930’s glamorous gangster life in Chicago. John Dillinger is the film’s centerpiece, released after nine years in prison only to be squeezed uncomfortably and fatally between two larger and far more deadly forces – the burgeoning FBI and organized crime. Dillinger and other infamous crooks meet their famous ends at the hands of Melvin Purvis and his nameless G-men.

Saving Private Ryan (1998) -vs- The Thin Red Line (1998)

The Smackdown. War is hell. And until Steven Spielberg got involved, we'd never really experienced war through the eyes of a soldier. We'd come close, with filmmakers as diverse as Coppola and Oliver Stone all giving us their interpretations, but it always seemed to be at a safe distance.  The viewer was taken on a journey, but not our own journey. Unlike Ron Kovic or Ben Willard, who undertake a journey for us, Spielberg attempted to give us our own experience in war without having to leave the cinema. "Saving Private Ryan," which graphically shows us the D-Day landings of a group of US forces in 1944, opens with an assault on the senses unlike any we'd ever seen. It thrust us into the heat of battle, the confusion and carnage of an assault that beggars description. It wanted us to know exactly what war is really like. 

At the same time, at a different film studio, a reclusive film director had also embarked upon a journey to show us the inhumanity and insanity of war. Terrence Malick, who had disappeared from the Hollywood radar for the better part of two decades in a self-imposed exile, had returned with a lengthy, languid exploration of the mental anguish of fighting the war in the Pacific, the other major theater of World War II. Gathering some of the cream of Hollywood talent and star wattage, Malick constructed a story of broken hearts, hope and devastation, the jungles of the Pacific cast as a beautiful backdrop to some of mankind's darkest moments. With "The Thin Red Line," Sean Penn and James Caviezel lead a massively talented cast into battle, told in a style that is so completely different to Spielberg's more grimy effort, so ensuring that we experience both styles of film-making to endure the horrors of war. 

Two mighty juggernauts of cinema, lined up head to head. Both set during WWII, both featuring a large cast of known names, all vying for screen-time, all with a story to tell. This Smackdown will be a brutal, casualty ridden affair that will leave only the bravest, the strongest standing. Soldiers, open fire!!!

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) -vs- Crimson Tide (1995)

The Smackdown.  People trapped inside the cold steel of big machines. Check. Ticking clocks relentlessly counting down to disaster. Check. Battles of will between A-list actors. Check again. Director Tony Scott must have known he had a good thing in 1995's "Crimson Tide" and was looking to repeat it with this year's re-make of the classic "The Taking of Pelham 123."  As far as action directors go, Scott (brother of Ridley) is in the very elite. He makes movies that are almost always worth the price of a ticket at the cineplex. The best are tense, scary, hard-edged ones where his screenwriters give him high stakes and the dialogue to support them (often for Denzel Washington) and then he paces the hell out of the film itself. We have a real fight on our hands with some Scott-on-Scott violence.

The Challenger. The 2009 "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" takes its inspiration from the 1974 film "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" which took its inspiration from the same novel written by John Godey. In the hands of current screenwriter Brian Helgeland, the central idea -- bad guys board a New York subway and take the passengers hostage while demanding a huge ransom -- remains the same. He's given us a few new twists, like the lead hijacker, Ryder (John Travolta) is now an ex-con and the negotiator, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) is now a transit executive. Then director Scott bends and twists it through pacing, tone and special effects. In this film, Travolta drives the action but it's Washington who gets put on the spot in one particularly tough moment when, without benefit of waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation techniques, the hijacker gets the negotiator to confess to a crime of his own. It's one of those "what would you do" moments and particularly effective as played by Washington.

Contact (1997) -vs- Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

 

The Smackdown. If you're old enough to remember the marketing campaign for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," then you'll remember the goosebumps you got when you heard the phrase, We are not alone.  What was great about that simple sentence was that it promised a movie about aliens that was about wonder and mystery and wasn't about the same old Hollywood treatment of life in the universe, namely that if it bothered to interact with humans it was for a nefarious reason, everything from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "War of the Worlds" to the later "Independence Day."   Twenty years after "Close Encounters" came another film that promised to make first contact a matter of humanity's growth out of the cradle and not some intergalactic cage match. Both "Close Encounters" and "Contact" were aliens for smart people brought to you first by the immense talent of Steven Spielberg and later by the immense intellect of Carl Sagan.  In my Hollywood career, I've had the good fortune to discuss UFOs and extraterrestrial life with both of these men and found them to have some very different visions of the subject.  They each have used film to express their views about life as it might exist "out there."  The question is, which version comes closest to what might be the truth about first contact, and which one is the better film?

The Challenger. "Contact" (the movie) directed by Robert Zemeckis is a faithful film adaption of Contact (the novel) written by Carl Sagan.  In both tellings, radio astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster in the film) hits the cosmic jackpot when the giant radio telescopes that are part of S.E.T.I. (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) actually turn up a non-random signal from across the universe.  Someone is talking to us or, more accurately, talking back.  You see, they've picked up the very first television transmission the Earth ever leaked outward, amped it up and sent it back to us.  It's an excellent surprise and -- without spoiling it -- let's just say that the first TV signal that went out from Earth is, well, unexpected.  After that, the story kicks into where no film has really gone before.  There's another signal buried in that TV re-transmission that is, basically, the blueprints for building a gigantic spacecraft... for one person!  Well, if there was ever a situation designed to stretch our humanity to the breaking point, it would be trying to determine who's going to be that lucky (or, in failure, unlucky) person.  Where will they go?  Will they ever return?  Will they die?  Is it some kind of trick?

Gran Torino (2008) -vs- The Shootist (1976)

EDITOR'S NOTE:  June 7 is the release date for the "Gran Torino" DVD -- after making $150-million domestic box-office since it came out in January of this year. Director Clint Eastwood shot it for a budget of $33-million proving to the powers-that-be that investing in his pictures is good business.  But is it the end of an era, too?  Here's our Movie Smackdown review based on an early screening in December 2008.

 Does Who You've Killed Make You Who You Are? 

The Smackdown. Rumor has it that "Gran Torino" will be the last film that Clint Eastwood acts in. In it, he basically plays a version of his tough-guy screen characters (think Harry Callahan) who, at the end of his life, has to deal with the fact that so much of who he is derives from who he's killed.  Thirty-two years ago, another tough guy -- John Wayne -- acted in his last film, "The Shootist," where he also played a character who, at the end of his life, had to deal with the violence that had surrounded his days on Earth. Both of these legendary tough-guys are portrayed as being brought down by disease, having cheated the bloody ravages they've inflicted on others, as they close out their screen personas in projects that say as much about their full careers as the actual films of the moment. Lending weight to the efforts is that added fact that both of these films parallel the goodbye to these iconic characters by playing them out against times that are changing: Detroit for Eastwood and the Wild West for Wayne. 

The Challenger. In what may be his swan song to acting, Clint Eastwood directs himself in "Gran Torino." He plays Walt Kowalski, a tormented Korean War vet and a character with a lot of relevance today, given that he's also a retired auto plant worker, still living in Detroit and wondering where and when it was that the whole thing fell apart. After his wife dies, it's just Walt, the family he really doesn't connect with, and the next door neighbors who are all Hmong immigrants. The story was written, not by some A-lister, but by Nick Schenk, a Minnesota wannabe who wrote the whole thing with pen and paper sitting in a bar, and then had Eastwood pretty much shoot every damn word of it. Part of what attracted Eastwood, no doubt, is how beautifully it allows him to give us a reprise of the Dirty Harry character, but wrap it in a bloody bow of human redemption at the same time. The narrative has Walt at his peevish best, hurling insults at the neighbors and his family, only to find himself in an odd-friendship with the Hmong kid next door who he catches trying to steal his prized Gran Torino, a car he himself had a hand in making back in the day when Detroit ruled the world. Yet violence and gangs prevent the film from being just a sweet or comic story of friendship: this is Clint's farewell to a character-type and he needs to go out in a way that pays off how he got in this world in the first place. I'll say no more on that score...